Catching Up

Ok, here comes the next chunk of information about the recent happenings in my life. I'm going to start with the latest:

Yesterday, we (our task force) were invited at the house of one of our colleagues who is going to leave our unit at the end of this month. He invited us over for a brunch. I was running a bit late, as I had a one-hour phone conversation in the morning, which threw me a bit off my schedule. I had also forgotten to recharge my GPS fully before leaving the house, and so after descending from the metro station, I had absolutely no idea where to go. Unfortunately, I hadn't written down Gunnar's phone number, but thank God I had the one of my boss on my cell phone. So I called him, but he was still on the way with his bicycle (plus three-year old son). However, he was able to give me Gunnar's landline number, and so I called him. He explained everything to me, and so I was able to find the way. So finally I arrived there half an hour late - however I was still the first guest!

The next one to arrive was my boss Philippe with his cute little son Aubery. Then little by little, the others showed up. The problem was that there was the annual "Brussels Marathon" and many streets in the city were blocked, which caused a lot of traffic jams. For me, this wasn't a problem, since I had taken public transport. Antonia wanted to come by taxi, but the driver was only able to drop her off near a metro station. Unfortunately, Kai was not able to come at all because of the traffic, which was a pity. This reminded me of last year at this time, when I gave a cooking class at my home. Quite a few were not able to come either, just because of the traffic.

Anyway, we had a blast. I supplemented the food choices by some home made granola and scrambled tofu. They really liked it, and my boss (and some other colleagues) said they wanted to place orders with me for monthly supplies of my granola. It's a recipe from Walter Veith, and it's really good - only sweetened with dates and bananas. I told Philippe that I would be happy to provide him with that if his wife could give me some music lessons in return (she is a voice teacher by profession). So maybe we could then prorate the lessons with the granola - we will see! My British music teacher recently left Brussels after all, so this seems to be a medium-term solution.

All in all, it was a very pleasant day. Gunnar and his wife have a 8-month old daughter, Lea. She is the cutest. She was so happy to see everybody - very social. Little Aubery was a bit shy at first, but then he started playing with all of my female colleagues - and really enjoyed it. I think he is going to that phase every child that age goes through - that they feel drawn to the parent of the opposite gender. Thus, he is very interested in spending quality time with women in general. Well, I left before he could try it with me! I already had an encounter with him earlier this year, when we were invited at Philippe's home. Indeed, he is also very social.

I gave Gunnar the book "Education" by Ellen White - one of my favorites. I'm sure they will be blessed by it.

I will probably post some pictures of the event later - I still need to ask my colleagues for permission. Not that I necessarily have to do that, but I decided to.

The weather yesterday was fantastic - an absolute contrast to Saturday weather, where it was raining almost constantly. Really strange weather patterns in this country!